Last October, a group of friends started gathering to start the adventure church planting. I’ve read some books and graduated from seminary, but one of my greatest inspirations for our new community is the Jimmy Fallon show.

Like most people, it took me a long time to warm up to Jimmy Fallon. His time on SNL swung violently between hilarious and obnoxious. When we started a Late Night show, I was just confused.

As he’s grown into the role, and mastered his unique approach, I find myself wishing that our new church planting efforts would eventually be described as “kind of like the Jimmy Fallon show, but for Jesus.”

My first hint that Fallon was trying to do something different came when I realized that one-of-a-kind hip hop virtuosos The Roots weren’t guests, they were Fallon’s house band. Then, in my constant search for new audio content, I came across a nearly two hour interview with Fallon that had me totally hooked.

Fallon told a Cinderella of being a goofy kid who did impressions to eventually landing on Saturday Night Live. Every step of his story, he kept repeating how lucky he was.

But it was when he got to describing the genesis of his late night show that I knew there was something very different about his approach.

He seemed almost allergic to taking credit for any success.

Fallon could not stop talking about how grateful he was to have such talented co-workers. The bulk of the interview was Fallon complimenting other people. Behind it was a hint of a collaborative system, where Fallon seems more like the host of a party than a driving manager.

Over the years, he’s gotten better at monologues. He’s come up with some great bits. Unlike his more serious predecessors, he seems utterly dedicated to making his show entertaining, rather than just glorifying entertainers.

He plays games with his guests. He creates entire routines around making jokes with The Roots. He convinces Tom Cruise and Ed Norton to smash eggs on their heads. He pretends to be Neil Young in order to force Bruce Springsteen to relive the 70s.

He is here to entertain. He refuses to entertain alone.

Reflecting on Fallon’s move to Leno’s old spot, NPR’s Linda Holmes wrote:

Jimmy Fallon lives on joy, and joy is not solitary. It’s why he’s not at his strongest in plain monologue delivery, and it’s why every single good bit he has is fundamentally a collaboration.

Could you imagine a better way to describe the daily life of a church community?

There is an ancient and ever present heresy that wants to professionalize the body of Christ. We create layers of official Bible readers, official singers and official servants. Then we line up and watch them deliver their professional religious show for an hour on Sundays.

Many churches are either dull and lifeless or forced and over dramatic.

Like Fallon’s show, we are committed to participation. We start every gathering by saying

Liturgy means ‘the work of the people.’
For this short moment, we are all participants and hosts.

Everyone has the chance to read a written prayer or to share from their heart.

We’re constantly encouraging people to open their homes and provide for one another’s needs. Our primary “ministry” at this point is to meet up for drinks, game nights and potlucks.

We strive to give credit where credit is due. Sermons are full of illustrations from within our own community, or quotes from church leaders who know more than us.

Like Fallon, we try to do good work without taking ourselves too seriously.

We aren’t trying to be perfect. We don’t have a band yet. Any official responsibilities are split between a few bi-vocational leaders. Our technical presentation is (I hope) clunky yet folksy.

The episode of Late Night ended with Fallon hiding in the background while The Muppets, led by Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem did a strangely powerful performance of The Weight.

It was ridiculous yet classy. A strange mix that Fallon has mastered.

He’s mastered it because he wants to create joy.

Joy is strangled by over-seriousness.

Joy can only be created by sharing moments with others.

May the same be said of the church.

The post Everything I Know About Church Planting I Learned From Jimmy Fallon appeared first on Chris Morton.

It also demonstrates the reality of politics in the U.S., and the dangerous game that religio-political groups are playing.

For a follower of Jesus, I struggle with this at two points:

How can we “Love Thy Neighbor” in this political system?

Politics in America has devolved into a stalemate between two parties. The argument is over how a third party, “the government”, should act. The very word polis refers to the way WE organize ourselves as a community, not how IT should act.

As an American, I would rather celebrate the times we use politics to work together to build our society. As followers of Jesus, our highest calling in society is to “love thy neighbor”. When we buy into the “Us vs. Them” mentality, we’ll never be able to do that.

Who are we to rule?

Political groups that brand themselves as Christian are acting on the assumption that Christians should use government to enforce their ideals on the world around them. Jesus chose to embrace suffering at the hands of the empire rather than to embrace those who wanted to crown him king. Christians need to remember this as they approach their interaction with government.

I’m not sure this fight is about what the two sides say it is. Let me be clear that I am no fan of abortion. Nor do I think politics can be totally avoided. But there has to be a better way.

Are your celebrating or mourning after last night? Or have you found a Third Way?

The post Texas Filibuster: What is this fight about? appeared first on Chris Morton.

Gatsby is a story about the lengths we will go to because of shame. Gatsby’s great secret is that there is no Gatsby. An impoverished teenage boy, ashamed of his upbringing and family, invented the character of Jay Gatsby. He then spent his life lying, cheating and stealing to create Gatsby.

Churches often force people to do the same.

“Church” in America is often categorized as a cultural institution. The job of a cultural institution is to propagate cultural values. Here are some (probably unfair) stereotypes to illustrate:

• Bible Belt Churches: Individuals are expected to wear formal dress, embrace sports, avoid dancing and drinking. There is often a focus on sexual morays and proper forms of speech.
• Mainline Churches: Intellectualism is triumphed. Education is a cardinal virtue. Involvement in progressive politics is expected. Proper systems must be maintained.
• Charismatic churches: Expression is king. Energetic responses are expected. Emotional persuasion is the norm.
• Boomer MegaChurches: Quality production is essential. Excellence is the high value. Bigger is always better.
• Hipster Churches: Dressing up is disdained. Recycling and eating organic are holy acts. Faith is silly. Doubt is a virtue. Terms like “Justice”, “Community” or “Africa” are often heard.

When Churches exist to propagate their cultural values, they create “Gatsbys.” To avoid being ostracized, people often invent Sunday personas, false versions of themselves that live up to their church’s cultural expectations.

Church Gatsby’s might be the thoughtful intellectual, afraid to bring up their doubts with their church. A Gatsby might be a teenager who is discovering sexuality, but has no one to discuss it with or an individual with a divergent political opinion who feels forced to smile and nod when issues of abortion or gun control are brought up.

There are (at least) two huge problems with churches that become institutions.

1. Neither Jesus nor the early missionaries created or promoted a specific culture. Jesus was constantly crossing cultural boundaries. In a culture that treated women as property, Jesus spoke to them as friends. He elevated the Samaritans, a maligned ethnic minority. He had dinner parties with people who were traitors. Peter and Paul, two of the first missionaries, carried Jesus’s message to other cultures. Paul specialized in this, making it his policy to become “all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.”
2. We are saved by grace, not culture. The beautiful and multifaceted complexity that is the gospel can be expressed in one phrase: by grace you have been saved. This means that the value of a human being is independent of their host culture.

That doesn’t mean that there is anything wrong with culture, or cultural institutions. When two or more are gathered culture happens. But a Jesus-inspired culture should find ways to embrace people who are different. If your church’s culture is creating Gatsbys, then you know something is wrong.

The post How Churches Became Full of Gatsbys appeared first on Chris Morton.

The time-honored approach to thinking about culture comes from H. Richard Niebuhr’s 1951 classic Christ and Culture. This post will outline Niebuhr’s five categories and how Christians can choose to relate to this phenomenon. It is by no means a statement of my own personal opinion.

Christ Against Culture
“…affirms the sole authority of Christ over culture and resolutely rejects culture’s claims to loyalty…”
The Church actively opposes culture, and therefore, stands in opposition to gay marriage. This could mean actively preaching against it or picketing. It might also mean using the church’s position on gay marriage to actively exclude others.

Christ of Culture
“…they interpret Christ through culture, selecting from his teaching that which best harmonizes with the best in civilization…”
The Church actively embraces culture, and therefore, actively works to promote gay marriage. This could mean carrying out civil unions and gay marriage ceremonies. It might also mean actively advertising the church as “open and affirming.”

Christ above Culture
“They cannot separate the works of human culture from the grace of God…”
The Church sees culture as the outworking of God’s relationship with man. This might lead to acceptance of gay marriage is a natural outworking of God’s interaction with the world.

Christ and Culture in Paradox
“…loyalty to Christ and responsibility for culture…”
The Church holds in tension their responsibility to be a separate Christ-shaped community with their responsibility to be a blessing to the larger culture. This could mean creating opportunities for dialogue and healing between the church and the LGBTQ+ community, while better defining it’s own sexual ethic.

Christ, the Transformer of Culture
“…a hopeful view toward culture…”
The Church recognizes the goodness of human beings made in the image of God, and the legitimacy of any self-sacrificial love. This might mean abandoning picketing for opportunities to serve alongside secular organizations, no matter what their sexual politics. It could also mean promoting healthy marriages rather than focusing on politics.

Is this a fair representation of Niebuhr’s views? Which of these is most appealing to you?

(Keep it civil. Snarky and hurtful statements will be deleted.)

The post The Church’s 5 Responses to Gay Marriage appeared first on Chris Morton.

I think that this problem is painfully apparent in our modern life.  These days we’re convinced life can be boiled down to information to be quantified and experiences to be bought and sold.  That is, until we are stuck alone in a quiet room with our own thoughts, or tragedy shakes us from our futile busyness.

What if placing theology on a pedestal actually killed it?  Being a queen means no longer walking among the base.  Maybe the reason “men lead lives of quiet desperation” is that we can an find no depth, or purpose in our day to day.

Everyday Theology isn’t that different from what Jesus did when he strode through the streets of ancient Palestine.  He took God from heaven to earth.  A theology modeled after Jesus will take our ideas God and eternity and push them through the sieve of daily life.

My friend John Chandler has organized a get together of compadres from Ecclesia Network, Missio Alliance and a few “off the map” communities of Jesus people from around Texas.  Dr. Roger Olson, of Truett Theological Seminary and the Missio Alliance, will kick things off. He will be followed by 13 practitioners, from 13 different church communities, telling their stories of how theology shapes our activities and our thinking, not just on Sunday, but Monday through Saturday as well.

I’m thrilled that John’s going to let me help MC, and that we’re hosting at my home away from home Space12.

I hope you can join us.

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